Basic Information

• Location – St. Paul Parish, Charleston County

• Origin of name – ?

• Other names – ?

• Current status – ?

Timeline

• ? – Earliest known date of existence

• 1750s – Thomas Cheverall (Sacheverell) owned Cane Acre. He kept 22 slaves on the property, but did not live there himself. He probably lived at his main plantation, Oak Lawn.
  

  Thomas Cheverall was active in his community. He represented St Paul Parish in the royal assembly from 1749-1751, was a member of the militia for Willtown District, served as a trustee of the Willtown Presbyterian Church, and was a founding member of the Charleston Library Society (Linder, p. 409).
  

• ? – House built

• ? – Henry Grimke owned the plantation.
  

  Henry Grimke had a relationship with Nancy Weston, a mulatto house slave. They had three children together: Francis, Archibald, and John Grimke (Slave Children).
  

• 1852 – Henry Grimke died in the typhoid epidemic of 1852. Nancy Weston was pregnant at the time with their third child. A codicil to his will stipulated that Nancy and his sons become the property of Grimke's adult son, Montague, an engineer for the Northeastern Railroad. Henry Grimke could not free his family because an 1820 state statute prohibited emancipations within the state (Slave Children).
  

  After Henry Grimke's death the plantation was sold to Bayard B. Davidson (Colleton County Deeds).
  

Land

• Number of acres – ?

• Primary crop – Rice

Owners

• Alphabetical list – Cheverall (Sacheverell); Bayard B. Davidson; Henry Grimke
  

Slaves

• Number of slaves – 22 (Cheverall)

  Henry Grimke had three children by Nancy Weston, a mulatto house slave. Grimke planned to move Nancy and his sons to Charleston after the birth of Nancy's third child, but he died unexpectedly during the typhoid epidemic of 1852. A codicil to Grimke's will stipulated that Nancy and his sons become the property of his son, Montague, an engineer for the Northeastern Railroad. Grimke could not free his family himself because an 1820 state statute prohibited emancipations within the state. Montague allowed Nancy and her sons to live in Charleston relatively free. Later, he made Archibald and Francis slaves in his own household (Slave Children).
  

Buildings

• ?

Web Resources

• Colleton County Deeds - scroll down to view the following deeds: Daniel Willis to W. F. Cone, 01 Aug 1870
  

• Within the Professional Household: Slave Children in the Antebellum South - contains information on the children of Henry Grimke and Nancy Weston
  

Print Resources

• Suzanne Cameron Linder, Historical Atlas of the Rice Plantations of the ACE River Basin – 1860 (Columbia: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 1995).
  

Contact Information

• Telephone: ?

More about Charleston

• Learn more about historic Charleston County including the port city of Charleston. We have helpful guides to Charleston history and Charleston libraries and museums – plus Charleston restaurants, Charleston bed & breakfasts, Charleston hotels, Charleston real estate, and Charleston jobs.